michaeLgraneY
- 08:52am Nov 7, 2003The Recognition: The Politics of Human Exchange program exemplifies
the award-winning educational opportunities available at Evergreen. The
overall structure and function of this program is exceptional. The
availability of individualized self-directed learning experiences,
terrific support facilities, and outstanding faculty involvement, are
why I chose Evergreen, rather than the many Colleges and Universities
closer to my home in Marysville. I gladly drive for 2 hours each way,
to receive this quality of education!
I cannot thank Gary Peterson, Raul Nakasone, and David Rutledge enough
for their outstanding work this year! It is their commitment to the
goals of this program, and to the education of their students that
maintains the exceptional quality of this program.
Many of the students in the program this year are graduating and going
on to graduate school. Many of us (myself for sure) would never have
chosen to go on if it were not for the advise, encouragement and direct
involvement of our instructors!
This program is part of an ongoing 20-year plan. It is extremely well
thought out and I feel it is well structured to bring out the very best
in each student.
Their ability to organize such a
wide variety of students, each with their own educational goals into a
functioning community of learners is simply amazing. They utilize a
list server on campus, a website, a suggested reading list, group
discussions (primarily student led), instructor led lectures, guest
speakers and constant personal contact via email and in person to weave
this magic.
They lead us gently but effectively to find,
recognize and assimilate the important concepts of what we had chosen
to study.
Our learning community, this year, was composed of a
very wide range of students. Some just out of high school, some in the
middle of their lives, and others, such as myself, who have been around
a lot longer. We had a very wide range of educational goals for our
experiences in this program. We had students who were studying
teaching, physics, Native American studies, microbiology, Spanish,
psychology, and many many more. Our needs were addressed, with
encouragement, enthusiasm, guidance, fairness and at a level that would
most benefit us, in our individual journeys. They challenged us again
and again to widen our experiences, refine our goals, and increase our
efforts and to form community. They guided our discussions with extreme
tact and subtlety. They entered into our discussions in the stance
of “co-learners” but their effect was to guide our discussions
with provocative questions and ideas. They were always guiding us but
with a gentle enticement rather than a heavy hand.
This is quite a team of instructors! Evergreen and
its students are fortunate to have them. They work together like a
well-oiled machine. They consistently gave authority to the students to
direct their own learning, while acting as the facilitators of that
learning. They expressed their viewpoints in our discussions as simply
their viewpoints and encouraged us to express ours. This created an
atmosphere of tolerance and exploration that added greatly to our
experience.
They are all extremely well educated and highly
polished in the craft of teaching. Their skill, as instructors, is to
be commended. I wish more of the instructors at Evergreen had their
level of commitment, expertise, involvement and attitude.
Patricia Parsons
EVALUATION OF TEACHERS -
In one of many e-mail correspondences with Raul, he once wrote:
"I am glad you are witnessing an important change at schooling, what we
used to think was play at childrens' age, is really active learning. At
that age and, really at any other age, we humans learn more by doing
activities than by being taught. Our brain is an organ for learning not
so much a storage for information. That is the main reason David, Gary,
Yvonne and I have these kind of programs like Recognition."
This statement made me feel happy knowing that I was successfully
accomplishing the goal that this class was designed for. Having
these three teachers and participating in the Recognition program for
the past three quarters has been a great experience for me. I
hope that in the future this program is offered and that other students
get the chance to explore the many different opportunities of learning
as I did with these teachers. It has truly been a great
experience.
Stephanie Howard
Program/Faculty Evaluation
Recognition: The Politics of Human Exchange is an excellent class to
take. This course promotes student learning through interaction
with
one another. Some students thrive on group interaction and others
prefer to work more independently. One thing that I really liked
about
this class was the expectation that each student would present their
project in front of the class. I enjoy hearing from everyone and
students have control over their own presentation style, length, and
format.
Even though students chose diverse project topics, we were able to
collaborate with one another during class time and through Web
Crossing. Web Crossing is an internet site which is an integral
part
of the class. This site enables classmates to interact with one
another while away from class. This site helps students who
missed
class catch-up and also lets student’s carry-on their conversation out
of class. Some students who are quiet are able to voice their
opinion
on Web Crossing. It is nice to have a variety of media to appeal
to
everyone’s unique style.
This class is flexible enough for each student to learn what ever they
want. This course really allows each one of us to have a hands-on
learning experience of our own choosing. The Recognition class
time,
gives us the opportunity to network with other classmates. Our peers
are our community and we all give each other respect. It is
exciting
to hear about others’ topics and learn from their research.
Recognition is different from other courses here at Evergreen.
This
class is shared by three facilitators: Raul Nakasone, David Rutledge,
and Gary Peterson. All three take the time to get to know their
students. The facilitators are flexible and willing to work
around
individual schedules to fit individual student needs. If students
aren’t able to attend class during the week, they may attend a Saturday
class. The facilitators also keep in touch with students through
Web
Crossing. These three facilitators are dedicated to their job of
teaching and helping their students learn. They have helped open
the
eyes of the students to realize that learning can be fun and to go seek
your passion. The facilitators also push for all students to
interact
and get to know the community.
These three aren’t your normal everyday teachers. They don’t take
out
a red pen and mark all over your papers. They use a different
method
of teaching. Students are able to direct the discussion and learn
from
each other. The free-form of this course really causes one to
decide
how they wish to spend their time. Life is all about choices and
we
have to live with the choices we make. Some students really apply
themselves and walk away with a wonderful learning experience.
Others
choose a more laid back approach and some will probably regret that
decision later in life.
Merrill
May 24, 2004
"Every lesson is
the first lesson. Every time we dance, we do
it for the first time. It does not mean we forget
what we already know. It means that what we are doing is always
new, because we are always
doing it for the first time." - Al Chung Liang Huang The
Dancing Wu Li
Masters By Gary Zukav
"Whatever he
does, he does with the enthusiasm of doing it for
the first time. This is the source of his
unlimited energy. Every
lesson that he teaches (or learns) is a first lesson.
Every dance he
dances, he dances for the first time. It is always
new, personal, and
alive." - Gary Zukav The Dancing Wu Li Masters
To learn about liberation, and libratory education a student must learn
about oppression. To challenge what is
socially
expectable education at the same time providing a learning environment
saturated with substance
and opportunity, to trust and support students, and to
believe one
hundred percent in what students are doing is what it
means to be a
faculty member in a student centered
program. The flexibility to
swiftly coordinate subject-to-subject, theory to praxis
and practice is
what it means to be a faculty member in a student
centered program. The genuineness to always start with the first
lesson, to courageously
identify with students as equals and to allow the
dialogical curriculum
of the students to emerge naturally without force, is
what it means to
be a faculty member in a student centered program.
Our faculty team Yvonne, Gary, David and Raul
quickly deconstructed the student teacher dichotomy
from the first day of class with an authenticity that
maintained
consistent throughout the entire year. They boldly
commit themselves to
student centered learning with truly liberating
pedagogy. They make
intellectual invitations to their students to exercise
their higher level
thinking skills. They have made a point of not
getting in the way of students learning but
finding a way to coordinate their knowledge and
wisdom in a compassionate way withthe emerging
curriculum of the
students.
They regularly
stay after class to speak with students, and always listen attentively to students so that they can support them with
whatever they
are doing. They are very active in creating a
learning community that is
rich in knowledge and is based upon freedom, the process
of liberation,
history, cultural pedagogy, and praxis; the action of
reflection.
By creating the bridge program our faculty team created
the most successful Native American studies program. The
bridge
program connected History: A Celebration of Place with
the Reservation
Based Community Determined program creating cultural and
educational
opportunities unique only to Evergreen. Students
were given to
opportunity to critically think about previous
educational agendas, and
to go beyond learning about cultures, to learn from and
with cultures
other then their own.
Students of Recognition become masters of their own
thinking.
They learn the value of curriculum development, and
instruction.
Students become administrators of their own education
while being
immersed in an environment rich in culture, direction,
and
opportunities.
Our faculty team is commited to student centered
learning. Their
abundance of knowledge greatly enriches the learning
enviroment. They
empower students and give them the opportunity to take
their education beyond modern conventions. They are truly a great
asset to The Evergreen
State College.
Isaac
From:
Paul Przybylowicz
[mailto:przybylo@evergreen.edu]
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 2:30 PM
To: All Faculty
Dear colleagues,
I recently came across this article which I thought others might enjoy
reading. It’s both an attachment and within the email
--
Paul Przybylowicz
Lab II, rm 3271
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505
"Think
critically, America needs the help!"
360.867.6476
przybylo@evergreen.edu
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i03/03b01601.htm
- The text of the article is below - From the issue dated 9/12/2003
By MARSHALL GREGORY
A couple of years ago, in one of the "idea of the university" seminars
that I regularly direct for professional staff members, I spoke with a
recruiter from the admissions office who enthusiastically agreed with
everything I had to say about the aims and practices of liberal
education but who reported that she hardly mentioned the nature of
liberal education in her standard pitch to prospective students and
their parents. When I asked why not, she hemmed and hawed and then
blurted out: "If we had the luxury of really explaining liberal
education to prospective students the way you are explaining it to us,
we'd do it -- but we just don't have that luxury. What our students
want to hear about is not liberal education, but jobs!"
As we sat there a moment, silently, the line that Emperor Joseph II
repeats in the movie Amadeus kept running through my head: "Well, there
it is." So helping students get jobs is a necessity, but helping them
get a liberal education is a luxury? If that is the case, I thought,
then there's not much difference between liberal education and sports
teams, exercise centers, campus movies, and ice cream in the cafeteria,
is there? Are we willing to live with that trivialization of higher
education?
Those of us who spend our careers putting our hearts and souls into
liberal education sometimes fail to realize that the most potent threat
to the mission we love comes not from outside enemies but from the
proponents of liberal education themselves. At universities that focus
on the bottom line -- and what university these days does not? --
supporters of liberal education have been on the defensive for so long,
they no longer know how to fight prevailing trends. They don't
challenge the current orthodoxy that the modern university must go
along to get along, especially in relation to marketplace practices and
values. Their friends' support is only lukewarm, sometimes no more than
lip service, and would vanish if liberal education became powerful
enough to threaten others' resources.
The liberal-education rhetoric that developed in the last century is
subtly and quietly accommodationist. Often, in fact, it is a rhetoric
of silence. It implicitly concedes the strongest ground in any
discussion of educational aims to faculty members from professional and
preprofessional programs, who love to insist that students' progress
should be measured exclusively by grades and skills, and who seem to
believe that making lots of money is an imperative somehow woven into
the fabric of the universe itself. Such people almost always talk in
narrow, instrumental terms about what a student is to do, rather than
talk in broad terms about who that student is to be.
The proper response is to point out that students' overriding concern
with postgraduation employment is simply misguided. The real danger is
not that students will miss out on a job, but that they will miss out
on an education. In 35 years of teaching, I have never seen a student
who really wanted a job fail to get one after graduation, regardless of
his or her major. (The best predictor of students' future incomes is
not their college major; it is their parents' incomes.) But I have seen
many students fail to get an education because they were fixated on the
fiction that one particular major or another held the magical key to
financial success for the rest of their lives.
Students' overriding concern should be how to develop as fully as
possible their basic human birthright: their powers of imagination,
aesthetic responsiveness, introspection, language, rationality, moral
and ethical reasoning, physical capacities, and so on. Those are the
powers that students must cultivate if they wish to strive for
excellence. Moreover, those are the powers that higher education is
especially suited to help students hone.
But while many faculty members talk twaddle about accommodating liberal
and vocational education -- by which they mean to "accommodate" liberal
education all the way outside the city limits where it won't bother
anyone -- we liberal educators too often make no response or, worse,
make small, meek noises that suggest we will be content with any moldy
corner in the university as long as we can, please heaven, just have
that corner. I cannot remember the last time I heard any liberal
educator bluntly and emphatically challenge the presumptions behind the
preprofessional rhetoric of narrow utilitarianism, which always paints
itself as simply being realistic (a rhetorical strategy that
condescendingly marks liberal educators as people with no proper grasp
of reality).
Accommodationist rhetoric began as a coping mechanism to allow liberal
education to coexist with burgeoning professional and preprofessional
programs. However, coping mechanisms that stay around too long run the
risk of becoming dysfunctional. Liberal educators have tried immensely
hard to avoid giving offense to the futurists and instrumentalists who
increasingly control university programs today. And we have succeeded.
We are nothing if not inoffensive. However, our rhetoric of
accommodation also makes us seem irrelevant and hopelessly
old-fashioned, like the crocheted doilies that my grandmothers placed
on every armchair in their homes.
Liberal education should not be about
going along to get along. It's
not about a genteel frosting of humane learning -- like knowing that
Bizet, despite composing Carmen, was French, not Spanish. It's not
merely about being well rounded, whatever that cliche means, nor is it
about being able to discuss a variety of entertaining topics at
cocktail parties. Con men can be well rounded, and fools can be
entertaining.
Liberal education is the pursuit of
human excellence, not the pursuit
of excellent salaries and excellent forms of polish and sophistication.
Liberal education is not even about excellent intellectual
achievements. Its goal is more ethical than intellectual: It focuses on
the development of individuals as moral agents, and it teaches students
how to reflect both analytically and evaluatively on the fact that the
choices we make turn us into the persons we become.
If the enterprise I have just described is a luxury, then I cannot
begin to define a necessity. What could be more necessary for any human
being than learning how to claim, develop, enjoy, and put to public use
the distinctive advantages of our nature -- to be able, first, to
choose the kind of person that we turn out to be and, second, to
influence the kinds of persons that others turn out to be? If liberal
education is a luxury, then so is truth in a courtroom, love in
marriage, or kindness in response to suffering.
I regret that I must contradict the young recruiter in my staff
seminar. She was, after all, only reflecting accurately and
conscientiously the views and pressures that she receives from her
usual audience of prospective students and their parents. But
challenging those views, no matter who expresses them, is crucial for
liberal educators. No matter what career we choose, the single job that
every human being has to work at is the job of deciding what kind of
person he or she will become. That is a requirement grounded in the
existential conditions of human life. What are discretionary are goals
that have little to do with the pursuit of human excellence. And when
those discretionary pursuits begin to define all of education, as they
threaten to do in academe today, then true education becomes
trivialized. Most of the professional and technical training that
people need for their jobs actually takes place on the job, and valuing
that training above education comes perilously close to making colleges
and universities minor-league farm clubs for the world's corporations
and bureaucracies.
Liberal education represents the last and best -- but least understood
and least appreciated -- mechanism for achieving the fullest
development of human potential. Today's universities too often pander
to, rather than challenge, students' educational utilitarianism. But
who is better equipped to help cure that problem than liberal
educators? Surely we can make a strong case for liberal education
instead of using accommodationist rhetoric that gives the store away
before students have a chance to see what's on the shelves. Without our
assistance, students may never understand that they get the profits
from buying the wares of liberal education, and that those wares
appreciate in value as students use them in a lifetime pursuit of human
excellence.
Marshall Gregory is a professor of English, liberal education, and
pedagogy at Butler University.
Quotes from Paulo
michaeLgraneY
- 08:52am Nov 7, 2003